2 comments to Violence and US Weapons in Mexico – and more

A series of expose articles in the San Jose Mercury-News by reporter Gary Webb told tales of a drug triangle during the 1980s that linked CIA officials in Central America, a San Francisco drug ring and a Los Angeles drug dealer. According to the stories, the CIA and its operatives used crack cocaine–sold via the Los Angeles African-American community–to raise millions to support the agency’s clandestine operations in Central America.

The CIA’s suspect past made the sensational articles an easy sell. Talk radio switchboards lit up, as did African-American leaders like U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Los Angeles, who pointed to Webb’s articles as proof of a mastermind plot to destroy inner-city black America.